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April 14, 2011

3000 can listen for less to link with printers

We want to use a Ricoh Afficio printer with npconfig on the HP 3000. However, we do have an HP LaserJet that could be used. What I recall hearing is that the Ricoh can work -- but the HP LaserJet, not being a foreign printer, would be easier to use. True?

Jeff Kell of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga replies:

If you are using real HP network printing without any third-party bells and whistles, the HP software is expecting to output something to a device along the lines of a JetDirect card or a networked Laserjet III/IV, and not much else. The 3000's MPE/iX generates fairly straightforward PCL output directed at TCP port 9100, has a rudimentary knowledge of SNMP status reports from a LaserJet/JetDirect. Later versions attempted some PJL handshaking in order to synchronize headers, print, trailers, and some error recovery.

So everything worked exactly as expected/planned, but for a very narrow window of time and hardware.

With that said, if you disable PJL (pjl_supported = FALSE), it eliminates many problems with earlier LaserJets and third party PCL-compatible printers, and now you're strictly dealing with fairly straightforward PCL.

If the print device isn't really an HP, it probably won't support the SNMP status requests either, so you may want to disable SNMP as well (snmp_enabled = FALSE). The combination of one or both of these should make any printer happy that "claims" to be PCL-compatible.

There was a later "turn off PCL" option (pcl_enabled = FALSE) but I never had a run at that one to know just how generic that made the driver.

We have some Ricoh multi-function devices on campus and have done some bulk printing to one before (not sure of the exact model.) But the 3000 had no issues with it after suitably neutering the MPE print configuration.

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Comments

3000 can listen for less to link with printers

We want to use a Ricoh Afficio printer with npconfig on the HP 3000. However, we do have an HP LaserJet that could be used. What I recall hearing is that the Ricoh can work -- but the HP LaserJet, not being a foreign printer, would be easier to use. True?

Jeff Kell of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga replies:

If you are using real HP network printing without any third-party bells and whistles, the HP software is expecting to output something to a device along the lines of a JetDirect card or a networked Laserjet III/IV, and not much else. The 3000's MPE/iX generates fairly straightforward PCL output directed at TCP port 9100, has a rudimentary knowledge of SNMP status reports from a LaserJet/JetDirect. Later versions attempted some PJL handshaking in order to synchronize headers, print, trailers, and some error recovery.

So everything worked exactly as expected/planned, but for a very narrow window of time and hardware.

With that said, if you disable PJL (pjl_supported = FALSE), it eliminates many problems with earlier LaserJets and third party PCL-compatible printers, and now you're strictly dealing with fairly straightforward PCL.

Comments

At Pinnacle Entertainment we used two Ricoh printers on our 3000 for over 4 years without any problems. The 3000 was aware whenever there was a paper jam or an out-of-paper state. Restarts continued from where it left off.

The main/system printer was an Afficio 2105 and the backup was an MP7000.

We did not need to use a JetDirect box and I think that the options set in their npconfig entries matched our LaserJet printers.